An increase in requests for more languages to be localised is putting added pressure on outsourcers to provide a consistent level of quality.

Localisation companies including Localsoft, Testronic, Universally Speaking and others have said they have received interest in more languages across the platforms they cover, and meeting these is meaning they’re having to operate in more efficient ways and in some cases adjust their working practices.

“The last few years has seen the need for more languages, less time in general to test and tighter budgets to work to,” Testronic Labs’ VP of games operations Alistair Harsant told Develop.

Beyond the common set of French, German, Italian and Spanish, new languages that these frims are being enlisted to translate include Portuguese, Arabic, Chinese, Indonesian, Korean, Thai and Turkish. The main reason for this the influx of emerging markets, such as Brazil, China and the Middle East.

“As more games are released on mobile platforms and often self-published, the quantity of text in games decreases, whilst the number of projects we handle is rising,” said Anna Wojewodzka, operations manager at Universally Speaking.

“A need for around the clock service to deal with short translations requiring a quick turnaround,” she add.

“As this trend progresses, we become more agile and responsive to make sure that we do not cause delays in the development process, but integrate our processes instead.”

It has been seen as a career entry point and, by some, even a late-stage afterthought of development, but QA and localisation are vital parts of the development process. Sean Cleaver speaks to those in the industry to find out how perceptions have changed about this area of the business